A great article in today's Memphis Daily News Small Business Spotlight about Acceleration Sports. We had a wonderful time last week with Don Wade (writer) and Andrew Breig (photographer) watching one of our small group training sessions. A huge thank you to Amy Barry and Sherri Kimery for showing Don and Andrew how it's done. We discussed wonderful and extremely important nutrition topics on what the body needs to function properly, great topics as always!

Trainer and nutritionist Stacy Peterson (right) of Acceleration Sports stretches with client Amy Barry, who had never considered working with a personal trainer until she met Peterson. (Daily News/Andrew J. Breig)

If personal trainer/performance coach Stacy Peterson could help volleyball players at the Hutchison School, including their own daughters, then maybe she could help them, too.

That was the thought process last May when Amy Barry and Sherri Kimery started training sessions a couple of times a week with Peterson.

Kimery, 50, and Barry, 44, came to this revelation from different places, with Kimery saying, “I hate to exercise; this is the longest I’ve exercised in my whole life.”

Trainer and nutrtionist Stacy Peterson (left) of Acceleration Sports stretches with client Amy Barry, who had never considered working with a personal trainer until she met Peterson.

Barry never had considered a personal trainer because “I’ve always been self-motivated.”

Yet on a recent weekday morning in Barry’s East Memphis home, Peterson was putting them through their paces. Using a spare room downstairs where a ping pong table was folded up halfway and pushed toward one wall, they stretched on mats, used dumbbells as heavy as 40 pounds, and worked on their “weak areas.”

For Barry, that meant addressing her back and core. For Kimery, lower back issues had once been such a persistent pain that she had been going to the chiropractor every week. She says she has been just once since May.

A lot of the exercises Peterson has them doing work the lower back, glute, hamstrings and calves – areas, Peterson says, that are weak in a lot of people.

“We’re big posterior chain chickies,” Kimery said, referring to the area of focus.

Peterson, 33, has been operating Acceleration Sports – www.accelerationsports.net – since 2006. While a Division 1 swimmer at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, she earned an undergraduate degree in kinesiology. She then studied abroad and swam with the Australian National Team.

“I played every sport imaginable when I was a kid,” Peterson said. “I loved sports.”

So it was natural for her to go into coaching. “I’ve never had a nine to five job,” she said.

She did have a couple of 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. jobs. She worked as an assistant strength and conditioning coach at both the University of California San Diego and American University in Washington, D.C. She obtained a Masters of Arts degree in coaching and athletic administration at Concordia University, Irvine, and is working on her Masters of Science in human nutrition and functional medicine.

Peterson trains athletes of all levels – everything from youth competitors to middle-aged moms to ironman competitors to Division 1 athletes. In all cases, she believes nutrition matters. In summary, she says additives and processed foods are bad and “dark, leafy green vegetables generally are good; I know they’re not the tasty, yummy Oreo.”

Oreos are not Kimery’s temptation. When she started working with Peterson she had a nasty Diet Coke habit, sometimes drinking as many as eight in a day. She’s kicked that, but is hanging onto red wine – in moderation.

“My nutritional vice,” Kimery said, although there are plenty of studies that claim red wine in small amounts has healthful properties.

Peterson charges $75 per hour for one-on-one training, $45 each for semi-private training (two people), and $35 each for 3-5 persons. She also has team rates.

She is a certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association. She also holds swimming, weightlifting, and holistic health certifications and is certified in CPR/AED.

Peterson also has found the personal training business to be a better fit and more rewarding than working on staff at a university.

“You’re working 14 to 16 hours a day. Really doesn’t make for much of a life,” said Peterson, who strikes the right balance of pushing clients and kidding with them. “I love working with people, helping them achieve their goals, to feel better, and to live healthier and happier.”